


closer you advance

by ninemoons42



Series: the princess and the pleb [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Feels, Inspired by Music, Princess Noctis Stella Lucis Caelum, Rule 63, Talking About Consent, Tutor Prompto Argentum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-12 23:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Crown Princess Noctis Stella presides over the opening of an orphanage by the sea, and wishes she didn't feel so adrift or unmoored.





	closer you advance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akumeoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akumeoi/gifts).



> Setting, title, and aesthetics from this music video: [in love with you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRuZFF34lZg)
> 
> Prompto's lyric from this track (which is also linked in the body of the fic itself): [at the beginning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyLSSKPkyVw)

Mirrors in their polished gleam, multiplying the graceful mosaics laid down beneath her feet and protected by rich lacquering and gold leaf, and for a moment she thinks she’s alone, and the melody that rises in her thoughts, the melody that escapes her in quiet stops and starts, is a melody that breaks her heart: the one and only lullaby that she can remember from her childhood. The melody she’d learned to sing, in her wobbling untrained voice, as she tried to sleep in an uncomfortable chair next to a bed that smelled of -- antiseptics, the heavy cloying scent of mentholated balm, the acrid broken bits and pieces of painkillers in their little white discs. The melody she’d learned from her mother, that she’d sung to her mother, as she slipped away into medicated stupor and the slow erosion of her, the slow loss of her --

She can’t escape the ghosts of illness, the ghosts that have walked silently in her wake all along, the ghosts that form the backdrop of all her memories and all her dreams, and she tries not to cry, and instead she throws her hands out to her sides and she whirls and she whirls over the cool floor, the melody rising faster and faster as her skirts billow out around her knees, and it’s almost like dancing with her father again, dancing and passing beneath her mother’s sweetly indulgent smile, drugged around the edges and still alert and still gentle --

Step that moves toward her, that isn’t her, and she stops dead and watches her dress stop dead, drifting slowly in her wake: the restrained sweep of slate-gray skirts. The fluttering hems of the net-weave cover-up she’s thrown on over her mostly-exposed shoulders, black cord and gold thread meshed together. The hazy image of her reflection, duplicated over and over again along the walls, one of her against all the rest of the world that only sees her glittering clothes, her practiced smiles, when she should be appearing with others, when there ought to have been others standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her -- 

“Princess.”

She turns reluctantly to the door, and checks her face in one of the last mirrors, knowing she’s not allowed to scowl, she’s not allowed to frown -- and there’s no surprise in the fact that Ignis is not alone. His somber black suit, broken only by the silver-gleaming leather of his fingerless gloves, the faint glint of outside light on the frames of his eyeglasses -- and beside him, a gap-toothed smile and tousled dark-red hair. 

A girl in a dress of white lace, the flowers in her hands a riot of deep blues, and Noctis hitches a smile onto her face, and kneels so she can meet the girl at her eye level. “Hello. What’s your name?”

“I’m Julia,” the girl says, and there’s a soft whistle in the words that makes Noctis think of her own fondness for colored sticks of rock-crystal sugar, cheap candy that had caused no end of problems with her teeth. “These are for you, Princess.”

“Thank you, Julia,” Noctis says, and she takes the flowers from the girl, allows the girl to take her hand and lead her out of the ballroom -- she’s aware of Ignis sweeping the corridor with one comprehensive glance, before he nods and overtakes them both, and --

Out into the waning light of the cloud-washed afternoon, with the smell of lightning and the thick waft of incoming rain on the air -- she remembers to straighten her shoulders, she remembers to walk tall, and she waves not at the clutch of photographers with their orange lanyards and their oversized lenses, but at the children dressed in white, as Julia is: orphans moving into a new home, and they clamor up the sweeping stairs of this seaside mansion toward her, swarming with laughter and a bright different song -- she laughs with them, gratefully, and she even raises her voice to join theirs and she can carry a tune, now, she doesn’t have to waver over the notes, but she still lets them drown her out. The plain clear intentions of them, the gleam of pale sunlight on their white clothes, as she walks among them and as they lead her back around to the front doors of the mansion.

She can hardly forget the hours of volunteering here, trying to be incognito, trying to lose herself in the mess and in the stink of painting the walls, of weeding the neglected gardens, of scrubbing the kitchens -- all of the work done all on her own, all in the interests of trying to hide from every enterprising freelancer with a camera and an Internet connection -- and now she sees the wonder in the children’s eyes, the anticipating voices of them, excitement enough to sweep her away and she accepts an oversized pair of scissors from Gladiolus, waiting at the entryway that’s been corded off with black-and-gold ribbons -- she beckons Julia forward, and one of the little boys in white who’s missing a front tooth, and together she and they cut the ribbons and she turns to the small crowd on the steps below and says:

“This is not an orphanage -- this is a home and this is a place of refuge, and it is given to these children by the Crown -- please help me and help them make this into a house of safety and of healing.”

None of those the words that Ignis has carefully coached her on: but she thinks he might be smiling, just a little, when the children look solemn and soft and wistful around her. 

Their minders appear from inside the mansion, coming out to take their hands and lead them into their dormitories, into their classrooms, into their playrooms, and she is left on the steps to bow formally to the people who are still looking in her direction. 

And it’s a relief when Gladiolus offers her his arm, and she takes it, and he leads her into the mansion and down a different set of corridors -- all the way back past the ballroom and past the children and their older companions.

On the other side of the mansion, screened away from public view and -- for now -- guarded discreetly by the rest of the Kingsglaive -- is a sanded shore and a long gentle slope down to a beach, to ivory sands and the whisper of the waves.

“How long do I have?” she asks, softly.

“I don’t know.”

She blinks.

Slants a look in Gladiolus’s direction. “That’s not something I’m used to hearing from you.”

“I don’t get to say it that often either. I’m enjoying the novelty.”

“Not that I’m telling you to stop doing that, but do you care to explain yourself?”

“That’s not up to me either -- I’m not exactly operating on just your schedule here.”

And she takes a deep breath of the salt-laden air so she doesn’t give in to the urge to kick him in the shins -- not that she’ll make that much of an impact against his boots -- and she settles for glaring at him, and for crossing her arms over her chest.

The wind tosses her hair into her face, tosses her skirts and the belled sleeves of her cover-up every which way, and she stares up into her guard’s impassive face for one more moment before -- she shrugs, and kicks off her pumps, and takes off at a run down the steps.

She hears a sound behind her, like raised voices, but she tears on, and leaves those voices behind, and she runs and runs and the sand is fine and almost soft beneath her bare feet, and doesn’t cling to her or suck her steps down into reluctant stop, and she can fool herself into thinking she’s free, here -- 

Before she can think twice she crosses over from the drier sands to the shoreline itself, to the waves rolling up -- cold water against her ankles, soothing the tension away from her shoulders and from her hands, and she’s not dressed to go into the water, and she wants to -- dive in, dive beneath, and lose herself in the peace beneath the churning foam, the wind driving the waves forward -- 

A particularly strong breeze whips hard at her cheeks and she throws her hand over her face to protect it -- too late remembering the flowers she’s still holding on to and those blue petals are torn away from her and she has to fight down the childish urge to try and save one flower, one thing that had been given to her, and just as she clenches her fists again and kicks at the sand there’s a voice calling her name and she stops dead in her tracks: it’s a different voice altogether.

“Noctis!”

Different and familiar voice.

She whirls, and wobbles on the turn and flails out with her hands, and barely manages to stay on her feet -- and she feels the mortified flush in her cheeks as she watches Prompto run up to her -- all the way until he, too, almost stumbles in the sand and then she’s leaping forward to catch him.

He’s laughing and wincing when she wraps her arms around him. “I wanted to look cool for you -- look, your guys even lent me a long coat, I guess they thought my puffy jacket was a little out of style?”

She smoothes her hands up his long sleeves, over the epaulettes left blank, over the standing collar that frames his freckles and his throat. Forgets how she stumbled, forgets how he did. “I think they thought the puffy jacket would have left you dying of heatstroke. It’s not that cold, is it?”

“You don’t look cold at all,” she hears him say, and she smiles and holds out her arm to him, lets him peer at the material of her cover-up. 

“I’m not. I’m used to this. I think I lived along this coast for a short time, when I was very young.”

“You look,” and she blinks when he falters and laughs a little, when he colors up and scratches the back of his head. “I always have to stop myself from saying the dumbest things when I’m around you.”

“I can’t believe that,” she says, smiling gently and, she hopes, encouragingly. “You do know more about the world than I do, after all.”

“Just because I know stuff out of books doesn’t mean I can always make sense -- the books just tell me how dumb I am.” But Prompto is taking her hand, and is tilting his head back towards the waves. “Want to walk? Carefully, so we don’t fall. But -- want to?”

“I was hoping you’d ask,” she says. 

But again and again the wind whips sharp salt into her eyes, and then she can’t see for the tears of pain, and she stops in her tracks and Prompto doesn’t walk on without her. 

Sweetly, he says, “Or we can walk in the other direction.”

“Or you can help me hide from the wind,” she mutters, and only afterwards does she realize that she’s said the words out loud.

He doesn’t laugh at her. He doesn’t call her silly. He says, “If I could, if I could hide from the wind and teach you how to do it, I would. You know that, right? Hide from the wind and from all the things that hurt you.”

“Kind of a given,” she says, softly. “That everything around me will hurt me. That’s my life. That’s the price I have to pay for that crown.”

“Which you’re not even wearing yet. Do you have to carry it now?”

“You sound so sensible. I know you’re not,” and she strokes her thumb over his cheekbone to soften the words. “But I need sensible people in my life. Can’t have too much sensible.”

“You’re right, I’m not sensible all the time, I’m just me,” is Prompto’s quiet response. But he laughs softly, afterwards. “Even so, I like to think you might want me around in your life from time to time. I mean, why else would your bodyguards pick me up and throw a coat at me and send me after you?”

She blinks, again. “I only wished you could come. I didn’t tell anyone to go get you.”

“Figured as much, from the look in your eyes when you saw me,” she hears him say. “So that’s what it feels like.”

She snorts, and shakes her head. “Remind me to have a stern word with them. Or, forget a word. I’ll bitch them out. Because they’re meddling idiots and they don’t get to do shit like this, especially not when you’ve got your own life to live and your own things to deal with -- they don’t get to, to pull you out when I didn’t even do you the courtesy of asking you to come see me, or something like it.”

“Not that you said anything actually wrong, Noctis. Just wanted to say, they did ask me. I mean they asked me ten minutes before they picked me up, and I wasn’t doing anything that important, and I said yes.”

“I really am sorry,” she says, quietly, “because they’re disrupting your life and they’re telling you it’s for me. I’m not entitled to anything from you.”

“Unless I offer it to you and you accept it. Like, well, if I asked you to walk on the beach with me and we’re standing here talking and not walking, you probably should be tugging me along, and shit.”

“No,” she says. 

“I have a better idea, if you’re up for it,” she says.

“I’m all ears.”

He leans towards her, smiles a little, brushes sand and salt from her skin and presses his mouth to hers in a swift chaste kiss. 

“One more?” she asks, she makes sure it’s a question, since they’re having this kind of a conversation.

“All you want,” she hears him say, and she lets her hands close hard on the lapels of the coat -- but she kisses him gently, softly, lingering only a little. “My idea?”

“What idea?”

Instead of answering, she hums the melody of the lullaby -- or at least that’s where she starts. She wobbles it, she changes it, slowly turning it into something else, a wistful kind of lilt that makes him lean in again.

This time she catches the words he’s whispering into her hair, like a snippet of a song, like actual lyrics: “And life is a road and I want to keep going; love is a river and I want to keep flowing[.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyLSSKPkyVw)”

The rhythm of the words, the presence of him in this place and in this time, the wind breaking in his hair and on his shoulders, flipping the hems of his coat to catch and mingle with her skirts -- it’s easy, then, without having to say the words out loud.

Humming softly, pressing the makeshift melody into his chest, she turns them around gently on the sand. His hands entwined in hers forms the pivot between them -- and the surprise in his eyes washes away on the sough of the wind, on the next time he blinks, and he joins his voice to hers, the lilt that had been in the lyrics falling softly around her own song.

When she runs out of breath she hears only the sigh and the sweet soft chuckle of Prompto, and she looks up just in time for the kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
